WITH the Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland tossing like corks in the ocean, the pipedream of Scottish independence is slowly sinking.

The Salmond model of Scotland as, likesay, Iceland now looks as exhausted as the fish stocks. The interdependence of our lives not just within this small island but across the turbulent seas is starkly illuminated by the crisis.

And as the waves crash in, who would now transfer from an ocean-going liner into a Para Handy puffer?

You will recall that it was me - alone - who told you weeks ago that Labour should not write off the Glenrothes by-election. That the high water mark of separatism - which imagines people in Newcastle to be foreign to us, Liverpudlians to be aliens, Londoners far distant folk of whom we know nothing - may have been reached.

If Brown gets out on to the streets of Fife and argues the case that all the working people of these islands will sink, or swim, together, Labour will win the coming battle on November 6.